The Kōfukuji Nan’endō and Its Buddhist Icons: Emplacing Family Memory and History of the Northern Fujiwara Clan, 800-1200

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how the memorial function of the Nan’endō (Southern Round Hall) at Kōfukuji in Nara began, continued, and transformed within the history of the Northern Fujiwara clan from the ninth through the twelfth centuries. Departing from the previous scholarship on the Nan’endō, this study considers that ancestral commemoration is as important as religious devotion in considering the visual forms of the sanctuary and its relationship with the Northern Fujiwara clan. With a longue durée approach to the Nan’endō along with analyses of its visual program and an array of texts such as courtier diaries, setsuwa tales, travel journals, and temple records, I demonstrate that the architecture of the building and its Buddhist images functioned as a locus of memory and an engine of remembering for the maintenance of family institution, its tradition, value, and ways of thinking. Spatial and visual components of the Nan’endō were like “building bricks” employed to construct an image of the Northern Fujiwara as a familial group, present their preoccupation with lineage and kinship, and make their existence and experiences visible. This dissertation therefore uses a novel approach to illuminate the interactions between place, memory, and family in Japanese Buddhist studies and unravel the role of religious sites as a visual means through which the faithful developed ideas about themselves and attitudes toward their lives. Chapter One outlines the history of Kōfukuji, the tutelary temple of the Fujiwara clan, from the eighth to twelfth century. This delineation sets up a religious and familial context, in which the Nan’endō was situated and its history unfolded. Chapter Two examines the creation of the Nan’endō as a memorial in 813, exploring how the practices of religious devotion and ancestral commemoration coalesced and manifested in the architectural features of the hall and its iconographic program. Chapter Three deals with the transformation of the Nan’endō as a miraculous site beginning in the mid-eleventh century. I explore the factors that contributed to this transformation and analyze Nan’endō setsuwa tales and replications of the building that testified to the sanctification of the site. Chapter Four delves into the devotion history of Fukūkenjaku Kannon (Skt. Amoghapāśa Avalokiteśvara) in the Northern Fujiwara family from the eighth to the twelfth century. I analyze the process in which the icon of this deity in the Nan’endō became identified as the protector of the Northern Fujiwara clan in the late eleventh century. In doing so, I examine images of the deity, accounts of the family’s devotion to it, and copies of the Nan’endō Fukūkenjaku Kannon. Chapter Five investigates the reconstruction of the Nan’endō and its images during 1181-1189 with a focus on the patronage of Fujiwara (Kujō) no Kanezane (1149-1207), showing how his role as the chieftain of the family, his Pure Land devotion, and contemporary belief in living Buddhas (shōjin butsu) informed the restoration of the hall.