Forum Kunstgeschichte Ostasiens: Öffentliche KeynoteTelling the Stories of Buddhist Makers: Methodologies to Recover the Cultural History of Medieval Japan

With the cataclysm of death, what happens to those remaining fragments of a life, which appear disposable to others but become the mourner’s heart-breaking distillations of both loss and trace? While a fading practice today, handwritten letters in medieval Japan were the primary form of communication between long-separated lovers, parents unlikely to reunite with their children, and distant friends, artists, and poets. In this rich epistolary culture, letters – reused, recycled, and reframed – figured prominently in Buddhist memorial rituals. With the death of a loved one, family members gathered the dead’s letters and transcribed sacred scripture on their surface, transforming the original missive into a letter sutra (shōsokukyō). But a study of this topic faces numerous obstacles, from silent sources to a lack of surviving examples. This keynote, therefore, workshops the methodological challenges of understanding such palimpsests through the angles of haptics, materiality, and the history of emotions.