DOI: 10.1111/rec3.12335 ARTICLE Women and Buddhism in East Asian history: The case of the Blood Bowl Sutra, Part II: Japan Lori Meeks University of Southern California Abstract Correspondence Lori Meeks, Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California. Email: meeks@usc.edu Part II turns to Japan, the other major East Asian region Funding information American Academy of Learned Societies (ACLS); USC's Early Modern Research Institute  Ito  Center for Japanese (EMSI); USC's Shinso Religions and Culture Sutra, examining the particular ways in which blood hell where beliefs and practices related to blood hells became commonplace, especially in the early modern period. This article traces Japanese reception of cults to the Blood Bowl cults developed there. As was the case in China, Japanese cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra often emphasized postmortem care for women and were disseminated largely through entertaining storytelling traditions. The cult also came to be associated, as it had been in China, with rites for safe childbirth. After examining the cults' historical development in Japan, this article will consider some of the larger insights made possible through a broadly conceived comparison of Chinese and Japanese cults to the blood hells. 1 | E A RL Y RE C E P T I O N I N J A P A N : T H E BL O O D B O W L S U T R A A S A T E X T P R O M I S I N G T H E S A L V A T I O N OF WO M E N Although scholars believe that variants of the Blood Bowl Sutra were circulating in China by the 11th or 12th century, the narrative is not attested in the Japanese historical record until the 15th century (Grant & Idema, 2011, 12; Maekawa, 2003, pp. 348–302, xiii-xiv, 2).1 Moreover, the text that becomes popular in Japan is distinctly Buddhist in orientation; Daoist versions do not appear to have circulated widely in Japan. The earliest Japanese references to the Blood Bowl Sutra indicate that in Japan, as in China, the text was commonly employed in the context of women's funerary services. As we saw in Part I, Chinese cults to the blood hells often emphasized the responsibility of children to honor their mothers through funerary rites that invoked the blood hell.  ben of the Tendai The Blood Bowl Sutra first appears in Japanese historical records in 1429, when the priest Cho temple Jindaiji, in Musashi Province, mentions in a journal that it, along with a number of other sutras, had been The author would like to acknowledge the American Academy of Learned Societies (ACLS), USC's Early Modern Research Institute (EMSI), and USC's Shins o It o Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, as they all provided funding that made possible my extended research on cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra. Religion Compass. 2020;:e12335. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12335 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rec3 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 of 16 2 of 16 MEEKS  1985, copied for the 33rd-year memorial service of a samurai's mother (Shiansho 1429.2, in Shiansho, pp. 189–192.).2 By the late 15th century, examples in which the sutra was offered at women's memorial services can be found in a number of different courtier journals and monastic records. These early records indicate that Blood Bowl Sutra rituals were first used in Japan as a means of saving (and perhaps pacifying) the spirits of deceased mothers. Eventually, the text came to be used in the funerals of most women, regardless of whether they had given birth to children. By the 17th century, the act of offering a copy of the Blood Bowl Sutra for women had become so commonplace that a 1666 Tendai funerary ritual manual included a model inscription for such donations. Here, the logic of offering copies of the sutra is made explicit. According to the passage recommended for inscription, the Blood Bowl Sutra narrative establishes the karmic conditions for “women's attainment of Buddhahood” (nyonin  jobutsu 女人成仏). As a result, the model inscription continues, the sutra offers a teaching that will cause the spirit of the deceased to be released from suffering and born atop a five-leafed lotus pedestal in the middle of the Blood  u 智無智通用集, 35a).  osh Bowl Pond. From there, she will attain enlightenment as the flower blooms (Chimuchi tsuy In Japan, the Blood Bowl Sutra commonly appears alongside another apocryphal sutra known as the “Sutra on  Transforming Women into Buddhas” (Tennyo jobutsu kyo 転女成仏経). The Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas represents a response to the Mahay ana discourse of sexual transformation, which Stephanie Balkwill analyzes in an earlier article in this journal (See Balkwill 2018). In short, Mahayana sutras taught that women needed to acquire male bodies in order to attain Buddhahood.3 The Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas, however, skips over the usual emphasis on acquiring a male body and celebrates female bodies as the storehouses of bodhisattvas. This sutra, which puts a notably positive spin on earlier Mahay ana theories of female embodiment, gained popularity in Japan's Heian period (794-1185) and was frequently used, through the Muromachi period (1336-1573), in women's funerary services.4 To a large degree, we can think of the Blood Bowl Sutra as a text that came to replace the Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas in women's memorial rites. But for a short span of time—from the period when the Blood Bowl Sutra was first introduced to Japan until the 16th century or so—the sutras were sometimes used together. Both, it appears, were regarded as texts appropriate for women's funerary services because they enabled women's attainment of Buddhahood.5 This association is made clear in the fact that many the Japanese referents to the Blood Bowl  Sutra include the phrase nyonin jobutsu 女人成仏, or “transforming women into Buddhas.” Some Japanese commentaries on the sutra refer to it as the “Blood Bowl Sutra for Transforming Women into Buddhas,” for example, and at  senji just outside modernleast one religious site that came to be associated with cults to the sutra—the temple Sho day Tokyo—erected a large wooden sign that read, “the place where women's buddhahood is realized” (nyonin   o 女人成仏道場). Now, in Japan, the term jobutsu,  jobutsu doj or attainment of Buddhahood, did come to take on a wide range of meanings. As early as the Heian period, for example, Pure Land thinkers commonly invoked the term to refer to birth in the Pure Land. In short, it refers in this instance to a positive postmortem fate, if not necessarily to Buddhahood itself. Still, it is clear that Japanese cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra came to understand the Blood Bowl Sutra as a text capable of offering women not only deliverance from the blood hell but also an efficacious rebirth. It is possible that early adopters of the sutra in Japan conceived of the text as introducing a new and improved means for ensuring women's success on the Buddhist path. 2 | B L O O D B O W L CU L T S A N D P R E E X I S T I N G D I S C O U R S E S O N POLLUTION Another striking characteristic of Japanese cults to this sutra is the degree to which they came to emphasize the role of menstrual blood in condemning women to punishment in the blood hell. As discussed in Part I, Maekawa's research has shown that Chinese narratives about the blood hells tended to emphasize the blood of parturition and only rarely mentioned menstrual blood. Although current research has not fully explained the preoccupation with menstrual blood found in Japanese cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra, we can observe that many sectors of Japanese MEEKS 3 of 16 society were, at the time of the sutra's emergence in Japan, particularly concerned with the problem of menstrual blood pollution. A significant trend during this time in Japan was the dissemination of protocols calling for ritual seclusion in the wake of activities deemed polluting. Students of classical Japanese literature are familiar with the practice of ritually avoiding particular activities or interactions (mono imi 物忌み), usually for a designated period of time following events that could render one polluted. Over the course of the late Nara (710-794) and Heian periods, protocols for ritual avoidance were written into Japanese legal codes. Scholars believe that most of these taboos, at least as they were formulated in early codes such as the 718 Jingiryo 神祇令, were based upon Chinese legal codes and drew on interpretations of Five Phase theory. The Jingiryo considered the following activities threatening to ritual purity: “mourning, visiting the sick, eating meat, adjudicating crimes,” “playing music,” and “engaging in defiled (kegare) and evil matters.” The text does not explain what activities are associated with kegare, but the Koki, a legal commentary likely compiled by 738, explains that seeing a woman give birth constituted an act of defilement. By the ninth century, pregnant women were forbidden to enter shrine precincts (Tonomura, 2007, p. 15).6 The court further institutionalized avoidance protocols in 967 with the promulgation of the Engishiki 延喜式, which included the most detailed protocols to date. Focused on the maintenance of ritual purity at shrines and at court, these rules were not of concern to ordinary commoners but were meant to inform the ritual activities of courtiers, ladies-in-waiting, and those leading or participating in rites at major shrines (Tonomura, 2007, pp. 15–16). The Engishiki lays out basic formulas for calculating different types of avoidance protocols, formulas to which subsequent codes would adhere: At all times, if there is contact with defilement or evil, avoidance is practiced: thirty days for the death of a person (count from the day of burial), seven days for birth, five days for death of a domestic animal, three days for birth of one (avoidance does not apply to chickens); [the] eating of meat requires avoidance for three days ….7 The Engishiki also went beyond earlier concerns with childbirth as a source of pollution by adding the menses as well. Menstruating women were to abstain from the celebration of festivals and were to remain away from court until their menses had passed (Tonomura, 2007, p. 16). A detail from Kagero nikki, the diary of Fujiwara Michitsuna's Mother (d. 995) suggests that aristocratic women came to follow such protocols at Buddhist sites, too. In Book Two, the author enters a period of retreat at the Buddhist temple Hannyaji in northwestern Kyoto. She explains that because her menstrual flow (lit. “unclean condition,” fujo no koto 不浄のこと) is about to begin, she can no longer remain in on-site accommodations. She thus moves to an off-site hermitage for a period of five days. Once her period has ended, she returns to the temple's main hall (Kagero nikki, Book Two). During the Kamakura period avoidance protocols were expanded, both in severity and in geographical and social application. It was then that major shrines began issuing their own regulations that delineated the avoidance protocols enforced at their institutions. Close scrutiny of these regulations indicates that many shrines enforced periods of ritual avoidance much longer than those called for in the Engishiki. Consider, for example, the Shosha kinki 諸社禁忌, a digest of Kamakura-period avoidance protocols for the 21 major shrines in the Kinai area. It reveals some disparities in the avoidance periods that different shrines required for women who had recently given birth: According to some shrine regulations, women need only avoid the shrine for seven days following delivery, but others insist on an avoidance period of 30, 70, or 80 days. The taboos for menstruation are also longer than those mentioned in Heian sources. They range from seven to 11 days, with one shrine specifying that, for the 100-day pilgrimage, a woman should wait until the fifth day after her period has ended before visiting the shrine (Shosha kinki, pp. 706–709). Also relevant to our discussion here is the fact that Buddhist priests in Japan had long invoked menstrual pollution as a rationale for barring women from sacred spaces, such as Mt. Hiei, the center of the Tendai school, and  ya, where the Shingon school is based. The practice of barring of women from sacred spaces is noticeable in Mt. Ko the Japanese record from around the 10th or 11th century and became increasingly widespread during Japan's medieval period. Although the origins of the practice are difficult to trace and, like Blood Bowl narratives, surely represent 4 of 16 MEEKS the confluence of diverse factors, some of the more compelling scholarly explanations point to the rise of esoteric Buddhist institutions, such as Tendai and Shingon, both of which came to emphasize ritual protocols that viewed women's presence as inherently defiling (Katsuura, 2009a, pp. 8–13; for English, see Katsuura, 2009b. See also date, 2004, pp. 137–139; Ushiyama, 1990, p. 52). Ko As indicated above, many of the concepts and protocols surrounding pollution prevalent in Japan during this time were based on Chinese practices and ideas. At least two streams of influence—that represented by the eighthcentury Jingiryo and that of esoteric Buddhist practices—had been introduced from the continent in the centuries before the Blood Bowl Sutra made its way to Japan. The particular ways in which pollution discourse developed in Japan created a situation that enabled promoters of the Blood Bowl Sutra to disseminate the cult not only as a set of practices that offered women postmortem salvation but also as one that promised solutions to the inconveniences posed by menstrual pollution. The Zen priest Unrei Taizen 雲櫺泰禅 (1752–1816), for example, describes the teaching on the Blood Bowl Sutra as a wondrous gift to women. He stresses the sutra's use as a material object in particular: Using the sutra as a talisman, he explains, women can proceed with confidence to sacred sites not ordinarily  open to them (Kaie rakusodan 戒會落草談, 1909, p. 210). In making sacred sites open to women during their menses, the sutra thus provided women with additional opportunities to create religious merit. 3 | I M A G ES O F T H E BL O O D B O W L HE L L I N L A T E M ED I E V A L P O P U L A R C U LT U R E Over the course of the 16th century, images of the Blood Bowl Hell became increasingly common in Japan's storytelling traditions. As R. Keller Kimbrough has documented at length, medieval Japan's ubiquitous itinerant preachers and storytellers—most of whom were Buddhist in orientation, though not necessarily ordained as monastics—helped spread didactic narratives (or what he calls “sermon-stories”), many of which were about women like the celebrated Heian poet Izumi Shikibu, whom, they taught, were saved despite sexual licentiousness and physical impurity. Many  and some became source material for puppet dramas sermon-stories evolved into medieval tales known as otogizoshi, or even Noh plays (Kimbrough, 2008). References to the Blood Bowl Hell become rather frequent in these sermon-stories. Both R. Keller Kimbrough  (dating from as early as the 16th century) in which the Blood Bowl Hell and Hank Glassman have examined otogizoshi is described in rather gruesome detail. In Tengu no Dairi, for example, Minamoto no Yoshitsune takes a tour of hell and witnesses the suffering of women in the Blood Bowl Hell. An illustration featured in a 17th-century version of this narrative reflects the text's explanation that women who have fallen into the hell are completely submerged in blood, with their “long hair float[ing] on the surface like duckweed” (see Kimbrough, 2008, pp. 232–233). The Blood  oji  yomigaeri no soshi  (early 16th c.), Isozaki (late 1500s), and at least one version of Fuji Bowl Hell also appears in Chob  (Glassman, 2008, p. 184; Glassman, 2012, pp. 151–154; Kimbrough, 2012, pp. 227–237). A version no hitoana soshi  dated to 1603 links the Blood Bowl Hell to filial debts, declaring that deceased children create of Fuji no hitoana soshi attachments in the hearts of their mothers, causing them to cry tears of blood that will accumulate as blood hells in the next life (Glassman, 2012, p. 153)8 From as early as the 16th century, illustrations of the Blood Bowl Hell also began to appear in paintings of the afterlife, especially in those of purgatory and the ten realms of existence.9 Itinerant teachers—many of them female—commonly performed picture narration (etoki 絵解き, literally, “explaining pictures”) using such paintings. Seventeenth-century sources indicate that many of the itinerant teachers who performed etoki were known as Kumano bikuni 熊野比丘尼, or “nuns of Kumano.” Most Kumano bikuni were not officially ordained Buddhist nuns but rather religious workers who dressed as nuns and traveled in order to raise funds for temple projects. According to early modern sources, they explicated images and distributed talismans for small donations. And while they were affiliated with the Kumano pilgrimage site in the Kii Peninsula, they traversed great distances and sometimes settled in villages far from Kumano (Nei, 2007, p. 426). MEEKS 5 of 16 Kumano bikuni played a central role in spreading knowledge of the Blood Bowl Hell. Although research suggests that these mostly itinerant female teachers used a number of different mandalas, they eventually came to be associated first and foremost with one known as the Kumano Visualization of the Ten Realms Mandala (Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara or Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara-zu 熊野観心十界図; see Figure 1). Around 60 such paintings from date, the 17th through 19th century have survived, and they follow a very clear and consistent iconography (Ko 2016b). The images combine ideas and images from a number of different sources: They draw on the cult to the ten kings, which had been introduced from China during the Kamakura period (Stone, 2016, p. 314); on images of the ten realms of existence, drawn from Tendai doctrine; and from new hells that had appeared in apocryphal or popular sources. These new hells included the Sai no Kawara, where children who died young were forced to build stupas for their parents in order to fulfill the obligations of filial children, and the so-called “women's hells”—the Blood Bowl Hell, the hell of two wives, and the hell of infertile women. While the image of the Blood Bowl Hell included in standard versions of the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara are clearly based on the descriptions of the hell found in the FIGURE 1 Kumano kanshin jikkai zu. Image courtesy of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History 6 of 16 MEEKS Chinese Blood Bowl Sutra, it is less clear whether these other new hells have Chinese precedents (Glassman, 2012; date, 2016b; Nei, 2007).10 Ko The Blood Bowl Hell appears in the lower, right-hand corner of the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara. This placement reflects earlier works, such as a ten-realms painting from the Muromachi period known as the Jikkaizu 十界図 of Zenrin Temple. In this painting, as in the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara, we see a small, red pond in the bottom right corner. In it are depicted a handful of unhappy women with serpentine necks and horns atop their heads. There are also two women dressed in white robes rising out of the hell on lotus flowers. Also inside the pool of blood atop a red lotus pedestal is Nyoirin Kannon, who appears to be handing a copy of the Blood Bowl Sutra to one of the women who have risen out of the pool. This iconography is more or less stable across the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara as well, although some copies depict women without horns and snakelike features. The new hells that appear in the Zenrinji Temple Jikkaizu and the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara—namely, the Sai no Kawara, the Blood Bowl Hell, and the hell of two wives—were, together with the hell of infertility, incorporated into Japanese views of the afterlife only during the 15th and 16th centuries (Ogurisu, 2011, p. 162). The Kumano bikuni, then, appear to have become active performers of etoki—and especially of etoki using images of the afterlife— during the very period when this new view of the afterlife was beginning to take hold. Indeed, Nei Kiyoshi even goes so far as to argue that the Kumano bikuni—who were truly omnipresent throughout much of Japan by the 17th century—played a central role in the formation and spread of this new view of the afterlife that had come together, from a variety of sources, during the Muromachi era. As the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara associated with Kumano bikuni became increasingly pervasive during Japan's early modern period, it was the mandala's depiction of the ten realms that became the most prominent vision of the afterlife held by people living in the Japanese islands. This means that the proselytizing activities of Kumano bikuni had a profound impact on the religious and cultural history of early modern Japan (Nei, 2007, pp. 392–394, 398–399). Another consequence of this history is that the Blood Bowl Hell, which happened to be one of the elements incorporated into this new vision of the afterlife that culminated in the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara, became an essential part of early modern Buddhist teachings about life after death. It is not clear when, exactly, Kumano bikuni first began to teach about the Blood Bowl Hell. There is a 15thcentury document that attests to existence of fundraising nuns associated with Kumano, and there is also a record from the same era that mentions women performing etoki. However, neither of these sources specifies that Kumano nuns were performing etoki on the afterlife. We only know that Kumano nuns using mandalas to teach about the afterlife—including the Blood Bowl Hell—were ubiquitous by the 17th century (Oyudono no ue no nikki, qtd. in  nikki, qtd. in Hayashi, 1986, p. 312; Ruch, 2002, p. 540). Nevertheless, these Hayashi, 1982, p. 124; Kumano mode earlier examples are continuous with what we know about later Kumano nuns: That is, that they taught along roads and pilgrimage routes, atop bridges, at intersections, and even in the homes of donors. Recent research has demonstrated that in addition to teaching about the afterlife and the Kumano pilgrimage site, at least some Kumano bikuni also explicated images of embryonic development and birth and sold talismans for fertility and safe childbirth (Nei, 2007, p. 396). The connection between Kumano and women's religiosity runs deep: Long before the rise of Kumano bikuni, purveyors of the Kumano site had promoted its acceptance of women. Unlike the many religious mountains in Japan that denied access to women—typically on the grounds that women's bodies introduced pollution—it was believed that the Kumano deity was not concerned with such pollution. Many works promoting the Kumano cult cite a famous poem sequence, attributed to Izumi Shikibu, in which the author, having successfully completed part of her trip to Kumano, starts her menstrual period and is worried that she must cancel her visit to Kumano as a result. She becomes a committed devotee of Kumano after the deity appears to her in a dream, reassuring her that menstrual pollution does not cause the deity harm and that she should continue with her pilgrimage as planned (see Nei, 2007, p. 312). That female religious fundraisers were active at Kumano to begin with is often attributed to the idea that the site welcomed women. In other words, unlike many other mountainous MEEKS 7 of 16 religious sites that were off-limits to women, Kumano's inclusion of women meant that it provided a space in which religious women—such as fundraising nuns —could pursue their livelihoods. Some scholars have been unsure what to make of the fact that women were so conspicuously involved in the propagation of belief in the Blood Bowl Hell (see, for example, Moerman, 2006, pp. 221–231). In his research on the Sai no Kawara hell, Hank Glassman notes the “cruelty of the emotionally coercive” methods of Kumano bikuni and other itinerant teachers (2012, p. 153). Barbara Ruch, on the other hand, has cautioned against making harsh judgments of the Kumano bikuni, urging us instead to understand the Kumano bikuni as compassionate figures who offered women solace in the face of the very real sufferings posed by female embodiment (such as infertility and death in childbirth, for example; Ruch, 2002, pp. 574–575). With few sources that reflect the stories of individual Kumano bikuni, understanding their attitudes towards teaching is extremely difficult. If nothing else, recent research, especially that by Ruch and Nei, has made it abundantly clear that Kumano bikuni were an extremely diverse group of women. Characterizing them as either merciful teachers or callous hucksters, then, is about as impossible as characterizing all Buddhist monks of a certain era as trustworthy or not: More than likely, they were simply a mixed bag.11 That said, it does seem very likely that some women may have sought out the teachings of the Blood Bowl Sutra proactively; indeed, as Nei and others have observed, it appears to have been common for people to invite Kumano bikuni to perform etoki and distribute copies of the Blood Bowl Sutra. We also know that some temples printed talismans that promised to eradicate menstrual or other pollution associated with the female body, making the obvious suggestion that women who obtained such talismans would, like Izumi Shikibu, be able to pursue their religious devotions, regardless of their physical state (Nei, 2007, p. 390). But there were dissenting voices as well, and we can  Densai and Nakagawa find numerous examples within early modern literature of well-educated writers—such as So Kiun, both of whom flourished in the 17th century—who critiqued Kumano bikuni for using frightening images of hell to manipulate women (see Kaminishi, 2006, pp. 156–160). Some religious leaders of the early modern period also derided belief in the blood hells and emphasized that their own teachings moved beyond such discriminatory ideas.  Miroku (1671–1733), who founded a very influential lineage As Mikazaki Fumiko has shown, the lay ascetic Jikigyo of confraternities at Mt. Fuji, disavowed both nyonin kekkai and the idea that women's menstrual blood was polluting (Miyazaki, 2005, p. 349). And as Barbara Ambros has noted, Nakayama Miki (1798–1887), the female founder of  , also rejected the idea that uterine blood was polluting (Ambros, 2015, p. 174). Tenrikyo What I hope to have established here is that popular narratives and itinerant teachers, many of them female, played an essential role in spreading a new view of the afterlife that included, as a rather prominent component, teachings based upon the Blood Bowl Sutra. In Part I, we briefly examined the part that baojuan performances of the Woman Wang/Huang story played in the spread of ideas about the blood hells in China. Although the Japanese case is quite different, it is interesting to note that, in both cases, female religious teachers were involved in disseminating popular narratives about the blood hells among women. 4 | E M B E D D I N G B LO O D BO W L H E L LS I N T H E J A P A NE S E L A N D S C A P E One of the apparently unique features of Japanese cults to the Blood Bowl Hell is the degree to which the hell came  date Naomi has identified more than 20 religious to be embedded—many times over—in the Japanese landscape. Ko sites in Japan identified as “blood pond hells.” Some of the more famous sites associated with the blood hells include  to  Zen the holy mountains Tateyama, Osorezan, Hakusan, Ōyama, and Haguro; the hot springs in Beppu; and the So  senji in Chiba. That so many sites would seek to connect themselves physically to the Blood Bowl Hell temple Sho attests to the degree to which the Blood Bowl Sutra and its cult became a popular mainstay of Japanese religiosity. Many of these sites came to identify with the blood hells during Japan's early modern period, after cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra had become widespread; by this time temples looking to attract pilgrims likely calculated that associations with the cult would allow them to flourish. Interestingly, many of these place names still refer to the Blood Bowl or 8 of 16 MEEKS  date's study reveals Blood Pond Hell in one way or another; a quick Google Maps search for the locations noted in Ko street signs, location names, and other physical markers that still refer to the Blood Bowl cults. date makes several fascinating In comparing the sites, which are spread throughout the Japanese islands, Ko observations, a couple of which I will share here. First, she notes that many of the sites were situated in bodies of water atop volcanic zones and/or near hot springs, where sulfuric content caused water to appear red in color. Such conditions resulted in bodies of water that actually resembled the red ponds found in the Kumano mandala images.  date notes that many of the sites associated with the cult appear to have engaged in rituals in which Secondly, Ko copies of the Blood Bowl Sutra were cast into bodies of water identified as blood hells. As a result, many printed  date, 2016a, copies of the Blood Bowl Sutra and/or talismans that could be used for this ritual purpose (Ko pp. 448–449). Rituals that involve casting copies of the Blood Bowl Sutra into bodies of water that represent the hell are mentioned in the earliest Japanese sources associated with the cult and appear to have remained a central ritual throughout the history of the cult in Japan. A section on the Blood Bowl Sutra included in a 1466 copy of Taishiden  toku), for example, describes a rite associated with the sutra that (a biography of Japanese cultural icon Prince Sho eventually became widespread in Japan: the nagare kanjo 流れ灌頂. According to this commentary, the warden of the Blood Bowl Hell taught Mulian that, should one throw a copy of the Blood Bowl Sutra into the Blood Bowl Hell, even very sinful women would be saved from the torments of the hell and born on five-colored lotus pedestals.12 The practice of ritually casting copies of the Blood Bowl Sutra into bodies of water meant to represent the Blood Bowl Hell is attested in documents dating from the 16th century, and by the early years of the Tokugawa period was widespread. Fragments of the Blood Bowl Sutra that had been copied or printed and cast into the water have been discovered on the banks of bodies of water associated with the Blood Bowl cult.13 Some version of this practice may have existed in China and Taiwan as well, for images of priests extending written documents into the Blood Bowl Hell are common in Qing- and Republican-period copies of the Ten Kings scrolls. Early modern paintings from Japanese sites such as Mt. Tateyama also contain images of priests standing on the banks of the Blood Bowl Pond, handing written materials to women suffering in its bloody waters. And most Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara depict Nyoirin Kannon handing copies of the sutra to women in or near the hell. The nagare kanjo rite remained a visible staple of lay religious practice through the modern period. In fact, it is mentioned in at least two late 19th-century works about Japan written by foreign visitors: Theobald Purcell's Our Neighborhood: Or Sketches in the Suburbs of Yedo (1874) and Edwin Arnold's "Japonica: Second Paper—Japanese People" (1891) (See Figure 2).14 As corroborated by Japanese scholarship on early modern and modern enactments of the rite, Sir Edwin Arnold explains that laypeople performed the nagare kanjo for women who had died in childbirth, as a means of saving them from the torments of the blood hell. That the nagare kanjo rite is mentioned in at least two Anglo-American sketches of Japanese life attests to its enduring relevance through the Meiji period (Arnold, 1891, pp. 25–26).  senji and Mt. Tateyama Two of the most famous sites associated with the Blood Bowl Hell—the Chiba temple Sho in Toyama—have been the subject of lengthy studies in English. It is worth noting that at both of these sites, male preachers appear to have taken the lead in promoting devotion to the Blood Bowl Hell. At both sites male priests offered special rites aimed at saving women, as well as talismans meant to dispel uterine blood pollution. In his 2005  o Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan, Duncan Williams includes a chapter The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sot  senji and other So  to  temples “promoted the idea that on funerary practice. There he discusses how Zen priests at Sho women were absolutely incapable of avoiding the Blood Bowl Hell.” In doing so, they created a market for talismans and ritual services that ultimately lined their coffers while contributing to the “growing marginalization of women” during Japan's early modern period (Williams, 2005, pp. 50–58).15 Williams' objective in the book is to complicate our understanding of Zen Buddhism, which has long been romanticized in the West as a tradition focused on medita senji and its tion and devoid of this-worldly (or “superstitious”) beliefs and practices. He draws upon the story of Sho promotion of the Blood Bowl Sutra as one example of how ordinary people in early modern Japan actually encountered and experienced Zen. MEEKS 9 of 16 F I G U R E 2 A woman performing  Image from Purcell (1874, nagare kanjo. p. 61) Caroline Hirasawa's 2013 Hell-Bent for Heaven in Tateyama mandara provides a comprehensive history of the Tateyama pilgrimage site. Hirasawa is especially interested in the visual culture of the Tateyama cult, and her book includes over 130 color images. Her careful analysis of these images allows the reader to see how blood hell images at Tateyama both drew upon and diverged from those linked with other traditions, such as the etoki of Kumano bikuni. Although devotion to the Blood Bowl Sutra is only one of many practices established at Tateyama, Hirasawa's book explores the cult's spread and development there in great depth, and her book provides an important case study of how Blood Bowl practice developed in a particular location. Like Williams, Hirasawa provides examples of local talismans used by male promoters (Hirasawa, 2013, esp. pp. 112–136, 137–177). She also documents the history of the Cloth Bridge Consecration, a ceremony developed at the Tateyama temple Ashikuraji. She describes this rite as separate from those for the Blood Bowl Hell but suggests that it was developed as part of a larger trend in which Tateyama promoters sought to attract women's devotion (Hirasawa, 2013, esp. pp. 149–159).16 Hirasawa's stance towards the ideology of Tateyama is also worth noting. She notes, on the one hand, that the discourse of the blood hells was one that blamed the victim; that is, women were said to deserve suffering due to their bad karma. On the other hand, however, Hirasawa suggests that the Tateyama cult portrayed the Blood Bowl Hell in terms that were generally more benign than seen in many other instances of the cult. In the Tateyama images, she writes,  women were not portrayed with serpentine features (as they were in many Kumano paintings and otogizoshi 10 of 16 MEEKS illustrations), nor were they shown being tortured by demons. Indeed, she goes so far as to say that the Tateyama images “characterized women with relative sympathy.” The practices offered at Tateyama, she suggests, were aimed at helping women cope with the “inescapable” suffering of female embodiment (Hirasawa, 2013, pp. 146, 135). senji and Tateyama are perhaps the two best-documented instances of blood hell cults in early modern Sho Japan. Attention to the particulars of how these cults became embedded in localized traditions enables us to better understand the diversity and range of discourse and practice related to the Blood Bowl Sutra. In some instances, it seems that male priests were promoting the cult for economic gain, while it other instances, it may have been the case that promoters were providing services that women and their families were actively seeking. It is also likely that different promoters presented the nature of women's suffering in the blood hells in different ways, some with less compassion for women and others with more. Additional studies of other sites will help us gain an even broader understanding of Blood Bowl practices as they developed in Japan. 5 | N Y O I R I N K A NN O N A N D P R A Y E R S F O R P H Y S I C A L P RO T E C T I O N The longstanding popularity of nagare kanjo rites speak to the perception that cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra offered women protection from the dangers associated with female embodiment. Additional evidence linking the cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra with the physical protection of women can also be found in the history of certain consororities, or  which were active at the village level, were frequently composed of local women from nyonin-ko 女人講. Nyonin-ko, ordinary households and often included women with very little education. We have few textual records of their activities, but there is a great deal of material evidence that points to the interests and concerns of nyonin-ko active during Japan's early modern period. In particular, we can learn about the Blood Bowl Sutra's connection to the popular worship of Nyoirin Kannon by studying the thousands of stone images of the bodhisattva built by groups called  “Nineteenth-Night Consororities” ( jukuya-k o 十九夜講; see Figure 3).17 These stone images of Nyoirin Kannon do not invoke the Blood Bowl Sutra directly, although there is an implicit connection, perhaps, to the images of Nyoirin Kannon found in Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara depictions of the Blood Bowl Hell. Where the link is made more explicit is in the vernacular hymns (wasan 和讃) associated with the Nineteenth Night groups. Japanese scholarship on Nineteenth Night stone images suggests that these monuments were made primarily by women's consororities that met monthly on the 19th day, or on the 19th day of particular months, to chant vernacular hymns about the Nineteenth Night Nyoirin Kannon, devotional chants (ご詠歌 goeika), mantras, and short sutras such as the Heart Sutra. These rites likely took place in front of a hanging image of the group's main deity, which in this case, was typically Nyoirin Kannon. Ritual offerings such as incense, flowers, water, rice, and candles would be made, and members of the consorority would often pray for a range of female-gendered needs: pregnancy, easy childbirth, successful childrearing, the healing of “women's illnesses,” and release from the Blood Bowl Hell.18 Some scholars have reported practices specific to particular regions in greater detail. Of Tsukuba-shi in Ibarakiken, for example, Nakagami Kei'ichi writes that pregnant women who were about to give birth would be invited to say prayers before the image of Nyoirin Kannon. After saying prayers for easy delivery, they would be invited to partake of the offerings that had been made. In Sano-shi, Tochigi-ken, Nineteenth Night prayers were divided into two types: requests (o-tanomi オタノミ) and thanksgiving (o-rei オレイ). Women would make prayers of request when praying for a child and the prayers of thanksgiving to thank Nyoirin for a safe delivery. In Kuroiso-shi, Tochigi-ken, young women of childbearing age would gather on the 19th of each month to say prayers for easy delivery and women's illnesses. And in one village in Kanra-gun, Gunma-ken, a women's group went door-to-door on the 19th day of the third month, gathering up the young women of the village and offering them special rice cakes believed to offer physical protection (Nakagami, 1990, p. 24).19 Several things are worth noting here. First, the promise of bodily protection for women, especially during times of physical vulnerability, appears to be a clear theme in Nineteenth Night hymns. One such hymn states that the very MEEKS 11 of 16 F I G U R E 3 This 1749 Nineteenth Night stone image of Nyoirin Kannon stands in Funabashi City, outside Tokyo. Photo by Yumi Warabi, reprinted with permission purpose of Nineteenth Night rites is to protect women from misfortune and difficult childbirth, and another asserts that Nyoirin Kannon will protect women throughout their lives (Nakayama, 1990, p. 715). Second, many Nineteenth Night hymns mention the Blood Bowl Hell directly, as well as the polluting nature of uterine blood. They often refer to specific details from the sutra itself. Even so, they present a rather benign and even empathetic view of women; their overall tone is one of compassion for rather than condemnation of women. And third, Nyoirin Kannon is celebrated in all of these hymns as the goddess who protects women from the dangers of childbirth and blood pollution. Nineteenth Night monuments, when read in conjunction with Nineteenth Night hymns, suggest that women may have been interested in the Blood Bowl Sutra primarily as a means of securing Nyoirin Kannon's protection. Many have noted that women commonly died in childbirth during the premodern and early modern periods. We can only imagine how terrified many women must have felt as they faced delivery. Added to these fears, of course, were concerns about uterine blood pollution, which had intensified over the course of the medieval and early modern periods, as kegare discourse continued to spread. And finally, another unpleasant reality of reproductive life in early modern  region. Fabien Drixler estimates that during Japan was the prevalence of infanticide, especially in the northern Kanto certain parts of the Tokugawa period, as many as 40% of all children were “returned” to the other world. Infanticide, he writes, was not merely a matter of “pruning” children that parents could not afford to raise; couples often felt immense pressure, both from their parents and from neighbors, to limit family size as a matter of principle. While it is difficult to make any generalizations, especially when we lack sources that represent women's voices on the issue, Drixler's data suggest that most women would have practiced or experienced infanticide at least a couple of times. Few methods of birth control were known or practiced among ordinary women during this time, and most could 12 of 16 MEEKS expect to fall pregnant at least six or seven times over the course of their lifetimes. Most women, then, would have faced the risk of a difficult birth many times over, and would also have had to endure pregnancies that ultimately ended in infanticide, whether they chose infanticide themselves or were not given the option to keep the child. Given these circumstances, one can imagine that some may indeed have experienced female embodiment as a series of physical obstacles at best, or traumas at worst. Recourse to a bodhisattva who would protect one through these trials surely would have been attractive (see Drixler, 2013, esp. pp. 2, 18, 57–73, 109–125). The deep association between women's salvation and Nyoirin Kannon is also attested in funerary monuments of early modern Japan. In the early modern period, it was extremely common for stone images of Nyoirin Kannon to mark women's graves; this trend is undoubtedly related to Nyoirin Kannon's rise in Japan as a savior of women and mothers.20 In some cases, such statues depict Nyorin Kannon suckling an infant, a style that is also found among Nineteenth Night monuments. 6 | H O W WO M E N U S E D D I S C O U R S E S O N T H E B L O O D H E L L S : SO M E F I N A L TH O U G H T S In the sections above, we have examined various aspects of Japanese cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra. First, we saw that the text and its cult, when first imported into Japan, appears to have been regarded as a technology for the salvation of women. Understood as a text that promised women the attainment of buddhahood, it was used in women's funerals, a practice that persisted through the early modern period. But Japanese women also saw adopted Blood Bowl rites as practices that could aid them in this life. The cults intersected with contemporaneous pollution discourse, offering women ways to circumvent or at least cope with such protocols. Over the course of the late medieval and early modern periods, cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra were expanded and popularized through popular storytelling traditions, especially  and etoki. The hell's incorporation into the Kumano kanshin jikkai mandara used by Kumano bikuni was surely otogizoshi an important factor in the visibility blood hell cults achieved in Japan. There was undoubtedly some historical contingency at work here: Although the hell had already gained some traction in Japan in the years leading up to the emergence of the Kumano paintings, the fact that it was included in those paintings enabled it to become truly mainstream, as the mandala's vision of the afterlife became a fixture in the culture of early modern Japan. As the hell became increasingly well known, the number of religious sites that sought to identify themselves with the cult grew and grew, further adding to the cult's visibility. And while there were certainly itinerant male teachers, as well as local male priests, who actively utilized the Blood Bowl Sutra in their teachings, it is clear that women were also important supporters and propagators of Japanese cults to the sutra. In the final section above, we examined cases in which consororities drew upon discourses related to the Blood Bowl Sutra as they sought physical protection from Nyoirin Kannon, especially during times of physical pollution stemming from childbirth and menses. Japanese cults to the Blood Bowl Sutra appear to have reached their apex in the 18th and 19th centuries. Fukue Mitsuru's research has shown that, during this period, even Japan's most elite women, the women of daimyo and samurai households, regularly commissioned rites aimed at achieving salvation from the blood hells (2011). Many celebrated priests from different sectarian traditions also discussed the Blood Bowl Sutra in their sermons. Although Japanese scholars have noted a handful cases in which temples or devotees were still using the Blood Bowl Sutra in the late 20th century, the cult has all but disappeared in contemporary Japan. Most contemporary Japanese Buddhist sects now recognize the cult as an example of religious discrimination against women and are embarrassed to acknowledge past participation in it. To ignore the misogynist aspects of blood hell discourse would surely be naive; this is a discourse that commonly met with critique from within the premodern cultures of East Asia, and it is also one that clearly benefited the financial and political desires of numerous parties. And yet, a carefully contextualized examination of cults to the blood hells clearly demonstrates that women succeeded, at various points in Chinese and Japanese history, in finding ways to use the discourse to meet their own needs. In China women could use the discourse to secure the loyalty of their MEEKS 13 of 16 biological children, as well as their own right to filial veneration; in Japan, women used talismans associated with the cult to protect themselves from pollution and to make religious pilgrimage possible regardless of their menstrual state. And in both countries women drew on the cults' rites in search of protection during childbirth. Moreover, we noted that in both China and Japan, female religious teachers played an important role in spreading knowledge about the blood hells. Men certainly taught about the blood hells, but it is also very clear that these discourses were not simply imposed on women by men. Women made blood hell discourses their own, sharing them with other women, whether for financial gain or out of a sense of solidarity. These discourses, and the rites associated with them, then, did at times create opportunities for women to foster religious community and camaraderie with each other. In China, for example, we noted cases of women inviting nuns to their residences to recite the Woman Huang/Wang story. And in Japan, the cases of nyonin ko building monuments of Nyoirin Kannon and gathering to pray for her protection serve as powerful examples of such community building. As noted in Part I, blood hell discourses in East Asia tell us a great deal about the everyday concerns of ordinary Buddhists in premodern and early modern China and Japan. They also provide us with a clearer picture of how ordinary Buddhists understood death and conceptualized the afterlife. And given their intimate connection with women's bodies, the discourses help us understand how Chinese and Japanese Buddhists thought about women and their place in the religious tradition. Perhaps most significantly, blood hell discourses provide us with an instructive example of the complexity of religious discourse and the necessity for nuanced, multidisciplinary studies of religious ideas. An approach to the Blood Bowl Sutra that is purely focused on the text itself would likely emphasize the rather crude, misogynistic ideology of the work. Although that ideology is impossible to ignore, a broader approach to blood hell cults, an approach that carefully considers the particulars of historical and cultural context, makes it clear that there was much more to these cults than meets the eye. The particulars of the cults varied widely, but we saw many examples in which women were able to use discourses derived from the Blood Bowl Sutra to seek practical solutions to the very real obstacles they faced in daily life. And thus, we are able to discern that even in cases in which the use of a religious text might seem obvious or predetermined, we must dig deeper to understand the relationships between text, practice, and meaning. ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS I would like to acknowledge the following funding sources, which made possible my extensive research on the Blood Bowl Sutra: the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS); the USC Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI); and  Ito  Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, as they all provided funding that made possible my the USC Shinso extended research on cults to the Blood Bowl Hell. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions and to Jessie Starling, who also provided ample feedback. All remaining errors are my own. ENDNOTES 1 Some Japanese scholars speculate that the sutra entered Japan as early as the 13th century but have been unable or unwilling to document early copies of the sutras. Most contemporary Japanese temple institutions view practices related to the Blood Bowl Sutra as discriminatory and do not wish to be associated with its cults or texts. 2  date Naomi (2004, p. 123). Also qtd. in Ko 3 The notion that women needed to acquire male bodies to advance on the bodhisattva path was taken up as a major  canon reveals hundreds of instances of “zhuannü” 転女, or the transtheme in Mahayana texts. A search of the Taisho formation of female bodies, mentioned in nearly 250 different texts. More than a dozen sutras teaching about women who successfully transformed their female bodies and attained buddhahood were compiled or translated into Chinese during the Six Dynasties, Sui, and early Tang (between the third and seventh centuries, see T. nos. 556–573, 580). In Japan a reference to this doctrine found in the Lotus Sutra that became especially well known. In the twelfth chapter (the “Devadatta” chapter) of the Lotus Sutra, an eight-year-old dragon girl, having been told one cannot attain the highest ranks in the Buddhist cosmos in a female body, accomplishes Buddhahood in an instant. The text makes it clear, 14 of 16 MEEKS however, that she took on a male body during the course of this speedy transformation. Still, there were numerous interpreters, especially in the Heian and Kamakura periods, who read the story of the Dragon Girl's enlightenment as evidence that women did not require birth into male bodies before attaining enlightenment. For English, see Watson (1993, p. 188). For more on interpretations of the dragon girl's rebirth, see Meeks (2010, pp. 68–72). 4 For more information, see Blair (2016) and Meeks (2010, epilogue). 5 For some examples of how the sutras were associated in funerary and narrative traditions, see Tokieda (2007); and Kuge (2005, esp. pp. 69–71). 6  in Kuroita Translation is Tonomura's with very small alterations. For original sources, see Ryo no gige and Ryo no shuge, kai, 1952–1955, 2 no. 2 and 2 no. 3. and Kokushi taikei henshu 7 Translation (from the section on “Provisional Festivals,” in Book Three of Engishiki) follows Bock (1970, vol. 1, p. 166) kai, eds., and Tonomura (2007, pp. 15–16). For the original text of the Engishiki, see Kuroita and Kokushi taikei henshu 1952–1955, 2 no. 8. 8 Other sources tend to suggest that the Blood Bowl Hell is comprised of uterine blood shed during the menses and in childbirth. The idea that menstrual blood is produced by tears is an alternative explanation, then, but one that is well suited, it would seem, to the associations between the blood hell cults and filial piety (a theme that was especially pronounced in Chinese manifestations of the cult, as we saw in Part I). 9 The ten realms of existence include the realms of buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, pratyekabuddhas, heavenly beings, asuras, human beings, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. 10 For more on the Sai no Kawara, see Glassman (2012, pp. 144–193). On pp. 144–145, Glassman notes that there are no known examples of the Sai no Kawara outside Japanese sources. Please note that the characters for “Visualization” in the “Kumano Visualization of the Ten Realms Mandala” are sometimes romanized as “kanshin” and sometimes as “kanjin.” 11 According to Ruch, “There was no such thing as a paradigmatic, authentic, original, essential Kumano bikuni. Kumano itself is not a defining adjective; it is not a single shrine or temple, not a school of thought. It is a huge holy mountain almost as complicated as Jerusalem. There have been, over the centuries, many kinds of nuns at Kumano, and they have been referred to by a variety of labels by their contemporaries ….” (2012, p. 575). 12  date (1988, p. 65a). Makino (1991) also contains the relevant From the Kawarazenji Taishiden (10 vols.) as qtd. in Ko section of this work (see pp. 110–111). 13 ji at Mt. Osorezan, for example. Blood Bowl Sutra talismans have been discovered in a lake on the grounds of Entsu Woodblocks for producing talismanic prints of the sutra have also been discovered at Mts. Haguro (Yamagata Prefecture) and Ōhira (Tochigi Prefecture), and prints made from such woodblocks have been found at Hakusan (Ishikawa Prefecture). Takemi Momoko believes that these items were likely used for nagare kanjo rites in which the talismans were cast into water, or for the related practice of burying women with copies of the sutra. See Takemi (1977, pp. 45–46) and Segawa (1980, pp. 98–99). 14 Theobald A. Purcell's, 1874 Our Neighborhood: Or Sketches in the Suburbs of Yedo, for example, includes a sketch of a lay as well as a brief (and rather Orientalist) description of the rite, pp. 59–61. Purcell's woman performing nagare kanjo, observations about suburban life near the Edo capital were first published in the “Japan Weekly Mail” series. 15  Williams also includes a translation of the Nyonin jobutsu ketsubonkyo engi (“The Origins of the Blood Pool Hell Sutra for Women's Salvation”), pp. 125–128. 16 Tateyama has revived the ritual in recent years, as part of a strategy to increase tourism. See Averbuch (2011). 17 For additional background, see Nakagami (1990).The translation of ko as “consorority” is somewhat misleading here since some Nineteenth Night ko may have included men and women as members. The Japanese term ko is not gender-specific. 18 See, for example, Kobanawa (1980, pp. 171–174). 19 These examples date primarily from the Meiji period. 20  date also mentioned this in her USC talk (Ko  date, 2016b). Ko WORKS C ITED Ambros, B. R. (2015). Women in Japanese religions. New York: NYU Press. Arnold, Edwin. (1891). Japonica: Second paper—Japanese people, with illustrations by Robert Blum. Scribner's Magazine, 9, 17–30. Averbuch, I. (2011). Discourses of the reappearing: The reenactment of the ‘Cloth-Bridge Consecration Rite’ at Mt. Tateyama. JJRS, 38(1), 1–54. MEEKS 15 of 16 Balkwill, S. (2018). Why does a woman need to become a man in order to become a Buddha?: Past investigations, new leads. 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Meeks has also written numerous articles and book chapters, many of which focus on women's roles in premodern Japanese Buddhism. How to cite this article: Meeks L. Women and Buddhism in East Asian history: The case of the Blood Bowl Sutra, Part II: Japan. Religion Compass. 2020;e12335. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12335