When Disease-Demons Attack!: Illustrated Narratives and the Horror of Buddhist Graphic Medicine in Japan

This paper discusses the integration of visual narrative tropes within illustrations of disease-demons produced by Buddhist monks in medieval Japan. In particular, it examines On the Types of Corpse-vector Disease (Denshibyō shu no koto, ca. 1300), a ritual and medical manuscript. Although On the Types has remained entirely unknown in research on art history and Buddhism in Japan, this work made an outsized contribution to the iconography of illness, supplying what would become the template for graphically representing pathogens. What made On the Types influential, I argue, was how its compilers depicted scenes of pathogenic horror inspired by narrative: the harrowing moment when demons assault their human victims and induce a fatal affliction. This attempt to channel the captivating power of narrative horror into disease representation, I demonstrate, cannot be understood through ritual and medical texts alone, but must be grasped alongside currents of narrative visual culture in medieval Japan.