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Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 8.2 (2025): 302–340; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.08.02.11
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Epigraphy and Women’s History)
The Ritualization of Charity: State Welfare and Buddhist Healing in Ancient Japan
Alexander SOGO
Columbia University
acs2299@columbia.edu
Abstract: This paper examines the relationships between Buddhism, rulership, and healing in eighth-century Japan through a study of charitable welfare practices performed by the Tenpyō 天平 era (729–767) court. Attempts at state-sponsored medical aid in times of epidemic crisis reveal how charitable giving came to function as a ritually powerful act that could quiet calamity in the realm, heal the body of the ruler, and advance the karmic salvation of all beings. The early Japanese court consumed Buddhist texts that extolled charity towards the sick as the greatest of all ‘merit fields’ (fukuden 福田), inspiring novel welfare institutions, the Seyaku-in 施薬院 and the Hiden-in 悲田院, that were premised on the distribution of medicine from Buddhist temples. Through a study of the movement and consumption of material medicines, we see that rulers of the early Japanese state relied on the expertise of monastic personnel to achieve their charitable goals. Far from merely dominating Buddhist ideology in pursuit of political legitimacy, rulers collaborated with temple institutions to construct jointly managed welfare systems that could both heal the sick and transform the cosmos.
Keywords: Ancient Japan, Buddhism and the state, Buddhist medicine, Buddhist social welfare
About the Author: Alexander Sogo is a Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Religions at Columbia University and an adjunct lecturer in Classical, Middle Eastern, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Queens College City University of New York. His research examines the interactions between religion and the state in ancient Japan through a focus on the body. He is particularly interested in topics related to healing and disability in the premodern world, and his current work emphasizes cultural responses to bodily abnormality, patterns of Buddhist social welfare, and the materiality of medical practice in early Japan.
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
