In this paper, I discuss the iconography of disease-demons in illustrated manuscripts produced by Buddhist monks in medieval Japan. In particular, I examine On the Types of Corpse-vector Disease (Denshibyō shu no koto), a ritual and medical manuscript crafted around the year 1300 by monks of the Anō lineage of the Tendai school. This creative manuscript depicts five monstrous demons, one in human form and the other four as human-animal hybrids. According to On the Types, these demons are worth knowing because they induce different varieties of “corpse-vector disease,” a contagious wasting disease that was also imagined to spread by corpses.
Although On the Types has remained entirely unknown in art historical studies, both in Japan and elsewhere, and has only rarely been acknowledged by medical historians and scholars of Buddhism, this work made an outsized contribution in medieval Japan to what Sander Gilman has called “the iconography of illness” (Disease and Representation, 1988). That is, perhaps more than any other extant work from the period, On the Types supplied what would thereafter soon become the iconic template for graphically representing disease pathogens in medieval Japan, and would continue to influence the repertoire of illness imagery well into the early modern period. What made On the Types so compelling and thus influential, I argue, was the way its compilers depicted scenes of pathogenic horror inspired by narrative: the harrowing moment when disease-demons assail their human victims and induce a fatal affliction.
The popularity of On the Types is demonstrated by the transmission of its two surviving manuscript editions throughout Japan. Compiled by Sanmon-Tendai monks active in the Ōmi area of today’s Shiga prefecture, near Kyoto, one edition was transmitted to Shinpukuji temple, Aichi prefecture, and another westward to the temple Kinzanji, Okayama prefecture. Similar images of disease-demons modeled after On the Types would soon appear in works as diverse as the physician-monk Kajiwara Shōzen’s Myriad Relief Prescriptions (Man’anpō, 1313–1327), texts on equine medicine, manuscripts depicting bodily worms, and popular medico-ritual texts.
In tracing the impact of On the Types on the iconography of illness, my study draws attention to the ways that its Buddhist compilers creatively integrated two genres that scholars often assume operated separately in medieval Japanese Buddhism: therapeutic prescriptions (both ritual and medical) and narrative. In On the Types, textual therapeutic prescriptions are combined with illustrations that depict the five disease-causing demons. But these illustrations do not merely “put a face on” invisible disease vectors. Rather, these illustrated scenes capture a snapshot of a pathogenic attack as it progresses in real time. In so doing, they effectively inscribe a narrative dimension into the otherwise medical and ritual framework of the text, a narrative dimension that, moreover, draws upon darker energies from hair-raising tales of demonic monsters on the archipelago.
In my paper, I highlight two narrative tropes the compilers of On the Types invoke through their illustrations. The first is the trope of the demon who induces disease by physically attacking the human victim with a part of their monstrous body (such as their saliva) or a tool (such as a mallet or a stake hammered into the victim’s forehead). The second is the trope of a horde of demons that roams around the streets of the city after dark, often known as the “night parade of a hundred demons” (hyakki yagyō). In numerous tales of medieval Japan, harrowing encounters with such demon gangs often led to infection by disease, disaster, and sometimes death. Partly based in anecdotal accounts of alleged run-ins with urban demons, both tropes were employed frequently within tale literature to construct a terrifying predicament for the narrative’s unwitting protagonist, whose subsequent salvation usually required intervention by ritual specialists like Buddhist monks or yin-yang masters. These two tropes were employed across textual and visual genres. They are found, for example, throughout didactic tales, known as setsuwa, as well as illustrated narrative scrolls (emaki) and temple origin stories (engi).
By incorporating these two tropes, the compilers of On the Types harness narrative and visual scenes of horror to animate their representation of the pathological predicament posed by the demons of corpse-vector disease. This innovative strategy, I maintain, cannot be understood through genealogies of ritual and medical sources alone, but instead must be situated within the visual culture of the medieval period. The late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, in particular, was a pivotal moment for the stabilization of images of the otherwise unseen agents of disease. As I shall show, the depiction of disease demons in On the Types resonates closely with similar depictions in numerous roughly contemporaneous visual works, including the Scroll of Afflictions (Yamai no sōshi, late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries), the Illustrated Miracles of the Kasuga Deity (Kasuga gongen genki e, 1309), Illustrated Origins of the All-permeating Recollection of the Buddha (Yūzū nenbutsu engi emaki, 1314), and the Origins of the Miraculous Assistance of Fudō (Fudō riyaku engi, fourteenth century).
Until now, the study of Buddhist medicine has proceeded neither from image nor narrative, leading to the neglect of genre-crossing manuscripts like On the Types. In foregrounding visual and textual narratives in the study of Buddhist medicine, my paper instead follows the lead of art historians, namely Yamamoto Satomi (Chūsei bukkyō kaiga no zuzōshi, 2020) and Kasuya Makoto (Bukkyō setsuwa no kōzō to kinō, 2003). In their respective research, both scholars have thoroughly demonstrated the centrality of narrative in shaping the darker panoramas of medieval Japanese art, highlighting the ways that stories have guided the hands of those who visually depicted disease and disability, hungry ghosts, corpses, and the demonic. This paper contends that Buddhist medicine in Japan was just as entangled with the darker aspects of embodied human life as they unfolded in time and through story, and as such, cannot be grasped without earnest consideration of parallel currents in visual narrative culture.
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.